Coaches and Officials Want to Take Trash Out of Games

Darrell Dent doesn’t claim to float like a butterfly, but occasionally he dances like one on the football field.

Nearly every time Dent scored a touchdown last season, the Montclair Prep senior went through a ritual. He’d remove his helmet, search out the nearest video camera and perform the butterfly, an arm-flapping, high-stepping dance move.

Dent said he skipped the routine only if the Mounties, 1994 Southern Section Division X champions, were winning by a large margin.

“You have to have some class,” he explained.

It is a code of ethics not everyone embraces.

Many veteran high school coaches feel strongly that Dent’s method of celebration, under any circumstance, represents the antithesis of good sportsmanship.

“Every coach that I respect and socialize with hates it,” said Darryl Stroh, baseball coach and former football coach at Granada Hills High. “It has gotten way out of hand. It starts at the top, at the pro level. The game is no longer what’s important. It’s the individual.”

Perhaps more than ever before, athletes and coaches are divided on what constitutes acceptable behavior on the playing field.

Stroh, 55, is not alone in his opinion that trends such as excessive celebration, taunting and trash-talking are detrimental to sports on all levels. Many coaches place the blame squarely on the shoulders of today’s professional stars, whose behavior is sometimes emulated by impressionable teen-agers.

“In my opinion, the problems are totally the result of people like Deion Sanders,” said Stroh, referring to the flamboyant cornerback for the Super Bowl champion San Francisco 49ers. “I have trouble watching the (NFL) games now because of all this baloney.”

But one man’s baloney is another man’s gourmet feast. For Dent and an increasing number of young athletes influenced by NFL, NBA and major league baseball players, celebrating a good play or talking a little trash has become part of the game, whether older generations like it or not.

“I want to put on a show for the fans,” said Dent, an All-Southern Section defensive back who played several offensive skill positions for Montclair Prep. “They pay good money to see good talent. You have to showcase the talent. I don’t think it’s ruining the game at all. If anything, it’s adding more excitement and drawing a younger audience.”

In the opinion of Dent and a number of his peers, doing the butterfly is nothing more than a harmless exercise in self-expression.

“I’m not there to show up any other players,” he said. “I’m just there to show my accomplishment.”

Others, though, contend the colorful but controversial antics of athletes contribute to an atmosphere of hostility that can lead to hard feelings and, in extreme instances, violence.

John Stevenson, 61, baseball coach at El Segundo High since 1960 and the school’s athletic director for the past 10 years, says he spends much more time than he used to dealing with disturbances and fights at events.

“I think everything is harder today,” Stevenson said. “There’s just a lot more hostility, a lot more frustration to deal with.”

Said Stroh: “It’s a reflection of the kind of society we live in. We’re messed up. Athletics is just an extension of society.”

Stevenson suggests extreme action if the situation does not improve.

“If the mentality out there is that you show your athleticism at the expense of the other guy, and do all these mean-spirited things, (athletics) should be removed from the educational system,” he said.

“Make it a club activity, because the high school has too many other things to worry about.”

This, mind you, from the most successful prep baseball coach in state history, the man who coached George Brett in high school and still enjoys working with young players.

Coaches, athletes, parents, administrators and game officials all have their own views on why attitudes toward sportsmanship are changing and what, if anything, should be done about it.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCES

Rick Scott, 46, knows what to expect when he returns for his eighth season as football coach at Buena High in Ventura.

“The CIF is going to have to make some type of new rule that players can’t take off their helmets,” said Scott, referring to the latest fad in end-zone celebrations. “Whatever my players see on TV, they’re going to do. I can watch a pro game and anticipate what my players are going to do next.”

The idea behind helmet-removing is to allow the athlete to have his face seen by fans, photographers and television cameras.

Scott sees this as yet another case of emphasizing the individual over his team, and he has every intention of stopping it before it starts. He uses reverse psychology.

“What I do as a coach, I show the antics of another team,” Scott said. “I’m pretty glib about it. I try to come up with demeaning comments about things I don’t like. I’ll say, ‘That’s something only a jerk would do.’

“When you see it at a game, (the celebrations) can look pretty cool. But when you see it a few times on tape, the players can see that it’s negative to act like that.”

Scott blames the pros and some college programs, particularly the University of Miami, for setting bad examples for younger players.

“The impact the pros and colleges have had on high school kids and sportsmanship is devastating,” Scott said. “It’s harder to control high school kids as far as emotions go. The taunting, that in-your-face stuff (causes) high school kids to fight, where a pro can just walk away from it. You have to be on top of things more than college or pro coaches.”

Billy Miller, an all-state wide receiver from Westlake High who is bound for USC, wishes his coach, Jim Benkert, had a more-liberal attitude toward celebrations and football attire.

That way, Miller said, he could have removed his helmet after scoring touchdowns and worn jewelry and a do-rag, the head bandanna worn by his idol, the 49ers’ Sanders.

“I think coaches have to understand that the game has changed a little bit,” Miller said. “(Celebrating) is just fun. I’m not talking about taking off my helmet and running up and down the sideline. But celebrating a little bit in the end zone, I don’t see what’s wrong with it.

“High school players look up to NFL and college players. They’ve got 100,000 people yelling for them. In high school we want to do the same things. It looks cool. I don’t think it’s (setting) a bad example. They’re out there having fun. If they can accept it on the NFL and college levels, I don’t know why the high school level can’t accept it.”

Attitudes like Miller’s have caused some coaches to question their own time-honored beliefs.

Brent Newcomb, 52, the 17-year football coach at Antelope Valley High, is known as much for his no-nonsense, disciplinary approach as for his success. He guided the Antelopes to the Division II title last season.

“You don’t have to be a great player to be in our program, but you have to be able to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’ ” he said.

But even Newcomb has wondered if his values are behind the times. He knows many of his players would copy what they see in the NFL if he didn’t prohibit showboating and individualistic attire.

“Sometimes I think, ‘Gee, what am I doing?’ ” he said. “Maybe I should come out there with a do-rag on myself.”

Newcomb feels a big reason attitudes have changed is because the behavior of professional stars has changed over the years. Sanders has become a media sensation largely through his on-field strutting and posturing, key elements of his Prime Time persona.

In the NBA, the boorish behavior of the Phoenix Suns’ Charles Barkley has helped make him a household name.

Barkley has publicly dismissed the idea that he is a role model, but prep coaches know better.

“Charles has a lot of admirers,” said Pat Roy, 27, boys’ basketball coach at Inglewood High.

“When kids see Charles spitting in someone’s face, they say, ‘If Charles Barkley can spit in someone’s face, why can’t I do it?’ There are kids out there who actually think like that. They see the pros, and they pattern themselves after them.”

Newcomb says it used to be easier to find good role models in sports.

“One of the greatest players I ever saw in pro football was Earl Campbell,” Newcomb said of the former Houston Oiler running back. “After he scored touchdowns--and he scored a lot of them--he gave the ball to the referee and went back to the sideline. Everybody knows he did his job.

“I hate to see guys get carried away with (celebrating). I know they’re copying what they see in the pros and colleges. I try to coach it down, but it happens. It happened to us this year.”

Newcomb said one of his best players celebrated a touchdown by bumping chests with a teammate in the end zone, drawing an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty.

“If someone knows a way to stop the players from doing it, let me know,” Newcomb said. “I was upset. I don’t want to commit any dumb fouls. That, to me, was a super dumb foul.”

Stroh, who coached Granada Hills to the City Section 4-A Division football title in 1987, says it’s understandable that high school players want to emulate their pro heroes, even at the risk of angering their coaches.

“A lot of (prep) coaches are doing a great job, but it’s a constant battle,” Stroh said. “A lot of guys I know are ready to hang it up because they’re tired of it. It’s not entirely the kids’ fault, either. They see the amount of attention this (pro) guy gets for doing this stuff, and they want it too.

“Our society has moved so far to the individual and individual expression. It’s one of the reasons I’m phasing out my coaching career. It’s getting too hard to teach the kids.”

Not everyone is ready to throw in the towel. Bill Norton, 47, the football coach at Pierce College and former coach at Bishop Montgomery and Palmdale high schools, says coaches need to monitor their players’ behavior and stop blaming the pros.

“The bad thing about the pros is they allow guys to stay in the game because of the money they make,” Norton said. “Guys get in a fight and it’s a double foul. That part we can blame on the pros. The fact that your own players do it, that’s your fault.

“Once a guy gets in a game and he exhibits unacceptable behavior, if you’re a high school coach or a JC coach or a university coach, now you’ve got your chance to stop him. As coaches we need to stop unacceptable behavior and we need to punish unacceptable behavior.”

If the behavior of athletes at the pro and college levels continues to go unchecked, Buena’s Scott foresees an ugly future.

“If we don’t stop this, then all pro and college athletics are going to look like professional wrestling,” Scott said. “Pretty soon they’ll be wearing capes and everything else to get attention.”

MATTER OF STYLE

Not all coaches are against allowing their players to express themselves in flamboyant ways.

Paul Graber, 37, boys’ basketball coach at Monroe High in Sepulveda, says a crashing dunk or wraparound pass is sometimes the most-effective way to stoke the emotional fires of a team.

“The athleticism of the players has gotten so good,” Graber said. “The skill level has risen so much, players are not content with just laying the ball up. They want to push the envelope. If I was 6-4 and could jump, I might want to do the same thing myself. If it can get your players fired up, I go with it.”

Perfecting new ways to dunk is all the rage. In a game against San Fernando earlier this season, Monroe point guard Quincy Brooks made a bounce pass on a fast break in an attempt to set up a teammate for an alley-oop dunk. Graber had a problem with this because Shaka Stiner missed what could have been an easy basket. But Graber has no problem with more conventional alley-oop plays.

“Some coaches may call it showboating, but I don’t believe it is,” he said. “I try to use the athleticism of my players to its maximum potential. As far as finger-pointing and trash-talking goes, we’re opposed to that.

“We try to take a blue-collar attitude. We work hard to win games. But if we can alley-oop and dunk, bring the crowd to its feet, we’ll take it.”

Others argue that bringing a crowd to its feet sometimes comes with a cost, the adverse effect being that it could bring the victimized team to its knees, emotionally speaking.

Jim Woodard, 49, girls’ basketball coach at Taft High and former boys’ coach at the school in Woodland Hills, sees nothing wrong with a player celebrating a good play. But he feels some celebrations go beyond good taste. For example, he detests showboating against an inferior opponent.

“This type of behavior permeates all through society,” Woodard said. “The whole idea of sportsmanship and fair play is perceived as a sign of weakness in many areas. The whole idea is to grind the other guy down. For some, it’s something positive to be merciless, something to be proud of.”

So, where does a coach draw the line? When does a celebration or a display of athleticism infringe on the basic principles of good sportsmanship?

It’s a gray area coaches have trouble defining.

“If it becomes demeaning to somebody else, if it hurts an opponent, that’s where I draw the line,” Graber said. “But throwing down a dunk and raising your hands in the air? Is that taunting or just raising up your team?”

Some coaches don’t leave room for interpretation. Mike Plaisance, 46, football coach at Village Christian High in Sun Valley for 15 seasons, does not allow his players to celebrate during games.

“We teach our kids to act like they’ve been there before,” Plaisance said. “It alarms me when I see a guy make a sack, maybe the only sack he makes in the game, and he celebrates in a jubilant style. I tell my players if they do that, then maybe I have the right to get on them for making one mistake.”

The problem, Plaisance says, is that celebrations can be misconstrued by the other team.

“Kids can take it the wrong way,” he said. “Nothing against the kid wanting to celebrate, but on the high school level you don’t need that because it breeds ill feeling. . . . You don’t need to rub it in.”

And, as Plaisance knows, celebrations can backfire. In a game last season, Village Christian’s Ignacio Brache kicked a 42-yard field goal on the last play of the game to give the Crusaders a 9-6 victory over Kilpatrick. But because Village Christian players and assistant coaches left the sideline and celebrated on the field, the team drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Kilpatrick was allowed one more play on the kickoff because a game cannot end on a penalty.

As punishment, Plaisance made the offending players sit out the first quarter of the next game and made his assistants apologize to the team.

“I wanted everyone to know (the penalty) could have been a disaster,” Plaisance said.

The problem a lot of coaches have with celebrations is that they can lead to more-offensive behavior, such as taunting. A wide receiver dancing in the end zone after catching a touchdown pass may not be a problem. But if he does it over a fallen defensive back, look out.

“Everybody who coaches at the high school level and on up has to contend with this type of activity,” said Pierce’s Norton. “When a guy makes a great play, scores a touchdown or makes a great hit, you want to see kids get excited. You want to have the whole sideline get excited. But what happens sometimes, guys don’t just get excited. They’re trying to rub the other guy’s face in it. That’s when the mistake gets made.”

TALKING TRASH

It was, by the player’s own admission, a dumb play.

Anthony Tauriello, senior point guard for Simi Valley High, was heading to the free-throw line with a chance to increase his team’s 73-72 lead against Thousand Oaks with 13 seconds left in a Marmonte League basketball game Dec. 14. “Game’s in the bag,” he thought.

But Tauriello, an emotional player known for his fiery demeanor, couldn’t leave well enough alone. He opened his mouth.

Tauriello isn’t exactly sure what he said, but it was directed at the player who fouled him and it was enough for an official to call a technical foul on Tauriello, who missed his one-and-one free throw. Mike Martin then made one of two technical foul shots, sending into overtime a game Thousand Oaks eventually won in three extra periods, 92-89.

“I was just trying to tell the guy he blew it under pressure,” Tauriello said. “I got caught up in the hype of the game and made a dumb play.”

Robert Barberie, Tauriello’s stepfather, talked with his stepson after the game.

“He told me, ‘Dad, it will never happen again, I promise you,’ ” Barberie said.

Tauriello presumably meant he would never get another technical foul, because he has no intention of giving up trash-talking.

“(The technical) hasn’t stopped me from talking,” he said. “I’m still going to talk, but in a (critical) time like that, I’m not going to take a chance. But in the regular course of the game, I will still talk.”

Tauriello says he does it to psych out opponents.

“A lot of times you can get people out of their games,” he said. “If they’re not used to having people talking trash to them, it gets them thinking about you instead of what they’re trying to do. It works at times. It also makes games fun. You start talking back and forth; it makes both people play harder.”

Not surprisingly, most coaches frown on such behavior.

Lou Cvijanovich, 68, in his 38th season as the boys’ basketball coach at Santa Clara High in Oxnard, won’t hesitate to bench a player for running off at the mouth.

“We don’t allow it here,” he said.

Cvijanovich, though, might be in the minority among coaches when he says taunting is less prevalent than it used to be.

“I think it’s getting better because of a combination of factors,” he said. “Leagues and administrators are more cognizant of it and are trying to alleviate the problem. Coaches too. I don’t think any coach wants his kid to do that. I’d stake my life on it.”

Philip Mathews, 44, men’s basketball coach at Ventura College, says if a player has to talk trash, he should do it like Larry Bird, subtly and out of earshot of an official.

“I used to be a trash-talker myself when I played at UC Irvine,” Mathews said. “I did it more like Larry Bird. You come down court and tell a guy, ‘Next time down, I’m going to rip you.’ Or, if you’re hot, ‘You can’t guard me.’ Back in those days, we were all pretty good friends, so there was rarely any hard feelings.

“Today there’s a lot more hostility. There’s not as much friendship with other teams. It’s not the same camaraderie you used to have.”

The changing times have caused Mathews to alter his views on trash-talking. He forbids his players from doing it because it can lead to greater problems, such as fighting. The fact that NBA players get away with it, he said, should be viewed as an exception to the rule.

“Those guys can do anything they want because they’re grown men and they’re getting paid lots and lots of money,” Mathews said. “But when you’re trying to mold a young man’s character, those types of things don’t have a place in high school, JC or college basketball.”

Stevenson, who has guided El Segundo’s baseball team to a 731-262-1 record and six Southern Section titles in 35 seasons, says bench jockeying has gotten worse over the years, to the point where he has trouble controlling it.

“That stuff coming off the bench toward the pitcher, I’m constantly on my kids to stop doing that,” Stevenson said. “You also get a lot of trash talk on the field that can’t be heard on the bench. I’d like to say it’s getting better, but it’s getting worse.”

Stevenson, who played catcher at UCLA in the 1950s, says trash talk has always been part of the sport, but players react differently to it today.

“It used to be when I played at UCLA, I’d go out between innings and warm up the pitcher,” he said. “The SC players would get all over you. They would call you every name in the book. But the ethic at that time was to never let the other guy know he was hurting you, that you even heard it. If you did, they’d get all over you for that, call you rabbit ears.

“Now everybody hears everything. You say something to an athlete today and he will turn and stare at you and maybe say, ‘Bleep you.’ It used to be when the game was over, the game was over. We shook hands and moved on. Now everybody is mad. This guy wants to fight this guy, parents want to fight. The official has to fight his way out of the gym. It is a problem and I don’t have any answers.”

Tauriello thinks older generations have it all wrong. When all is said and done, including the trash-talking, he says most players walk away from a game without harboring any resentment.

“From my experience, during the game and after, you shake hands,” the Simi Valley standout said. “Most of the good players understand that (talking) is just part of the game. It’s the players who don’t know how to handle it and haven’t experienced it who want to take it to fighting. Most of the good players know that stuff is left on the court.”

In Tauriello’s world, talk is cheap.

ENFORCING THE RULES

When longtime official Jim Pacheco and his regular partner, Marty Hall, work a basketball game, they prepare for the worst.

“We call it going to war,” Pacheco said. “I know he’s watching my back and I’m watching his.”

In 17 years as an official, Pacheco says he has been threatened by fans, intentionally knocked down by football players and berated by coaches, some of whom have followed him into the dressing room after games. He has been banned from officiating at certain schools because someone, usually a coach, didn’t like the calls he made.

“I find myself, more so now than ever, looking around worrying about exits and safety at a volatile game,” he said.

Pacheco, 35, says the lack of respect afforded officials carries over to the game. He compares it to a chain reaction: A coach gets angry, players get angry and then fans get angry. At that point, enforcing the rules and keeping the peace become equally important.

“It’s hard to keep focused on the game when you’re baby-sitting instead of officiating,” Pacheco said. “A lot of kids are not taught to respect the official. In my day, we would be benched or suspended if we ever talked back to an official. Now it’s the order of the day.

“If a coach gets out of control, the players have a tendency to emulate him and get excited about it. That’s the thing that worries us the most.”

In a hostile atmosphere, Pacheco says, athletes are more likely to express themselves in negative ways.

“It has gotten much worse, the trash-talking and taunting,” he said. “In all the rules that we deal with on the high school and college levels, in all sports, more emphasis has been put on curbing that. It seems to be a national trend.”

Pacheco, an Oxnard resident, officiates high school football and basketball in the Channel Coast region, an area stretching north from Calabasas to Santa Barbara. He also officiates small-college football and is a college baseball umpire, working mostly Pacific 10 Conference games.

Despite stricter rules dealing with unsportsmanlike conduct, Pacheco says athletes’ behavior has never been worse.

“I’m calling more technicals in high school basketball than ever before,” he said. “It seems that when (players) make a good play, they think they have to do the finger-pointing and get in someone’s face. It all comes from the showboating they see on TV.”

Pacheco said he and Hall called four technical fouls and ejected one player, all for trash-talking, in a tournament game between Westlake and Crespi in December.

“And you know what? They never stopped talking,” Pacheco said. “It was one of the ugliest games we’ve ever worked together. The athleticism is there, but it’s overshadowed. The great plays are wiped out by that type of stuff.”

Many times athletes are dumbfounded when they are penalized because they are unaware that high school rules differ from what is enforced on the pro level, Pacheco said. He cited an example from last season’s Southern Section Division VIII football final between Bloomington and La Mirada.

“A Bloomington kid made a great tackle and while he was lying on top of (the La Mirada player) he head-butted him,” Pacheco said. “It cost him 15 yards after making a good play. I could see that when I flagged him he was confused. He didn’t understand why I threw the flag.”

Players aren’t the only ones confused. Coaches become befuddled when the officiating varies from one game to the next. An end-zone celebration will draw a 15-yard penalty if an official considers it unsportsmanlike conduct. But another official, perhaps not wanting to impede the contest, might look the other way.

Cvijanovich, the Santa Clara basketball coach, feels officials sometimes allow players to get away with too much.

“Every sport has rules to control the game,” Cvijanovich said. “Sometimes I think officials don’t tag a kid right away because they don’t want to have an effect on the game. They let it go by, and before you know it, it becomes a nasty situation. Somewhere along the line, they’re going to have to really start sitting on these kids.”

Norton, the Pierce football coach, agrees that officials sometimes fail to enforce the rules.

“During double days, I have officials come and explain to my players any rules changes,” Norton said. “They go through what is taunting, what is unacceptable as far as uniforms go. This was the year they were going to call stuff so strict, and then sometimes they don’t.”

Pacheco, though, argues that when officials come down hard on an athlete by issuing a technical foul or ejection, oftentimes it’s the coach who protests the loudest.

“We’re in a lose-lose situation,” Pacheco said. “If we don’t control a situation, we get criticized for not controlling the game. If we do call it, we get criticized for not letting the kids play.”

But that’s no reason to resist making a tough call, Pacheco said.

“As officials, we have to take the responsibility,” he said. “I take it each time I go out on the field. There are times when we have to step forward and send a message, and it has to be done early (in a game) and it has to be done consistently.”

Pacheco says cooperation is needed from all parties involved--officials, coaches, athletes and administrators--in order to avoid problems and maintain the integrity of the game.

“The game is bigger than all of us,” he said. “It’s going to be around long after we’re gone. As caretakers of the sport, it is our responsibility to try and maintain it for the next generation. The responsibility of that should not be taken lightly.”